Here's the second part of the Q&A with Harmonix employees featuring your questions from the forums.
Q: Could someone please leak the secret online band leader determination criteria? I’m beginning to think it’s based on ineptitude or life-time number of band-mates kicked for no apparent reason.
A: Dan T: It's a complex formula based on the types of rockband.com posts:
Leader priority = (number of times you didn't complain about DLC announcements) - (number of death threats towards HMX employees) + (number of times hmxjohnlok cries)
Seriously though, it's a combination of factors. We'll usually merge smaller groups into bigger ones, so if two people are playing on one console and one person is playing on another console, the console with two people on it will become the leader's console. We also do some Quality of Service checks to make sure the leader is the person with the best internet connection.
Our general design theory here is that if you desperately want to be the leader, you can do this by inviting friends into your game - otherwise you have to take your chances in an area where everybody wants to be the lead.
Q: If you could challenge anyone in the world (living or dead) to a game of Rock Band, who would it be and which instrument?
A1: JoeKelly: After authoring the Grateful Dead, easily Jerry Garcia, guitar. I'm willing to bet I'd be able to recreate his songs with more rhythmic accuracy than he could.
A2: Chris C: I’d challenge Lenin to “Run to the Hills” on guitar.
A3: Jeff Somers: Jimi Hendrix, vocals and guitar. I'd just want to see him play. He'd mod the guitar to add 943 buttons & he'd use all of them.
Q: Who is the best vocalist at Harmonix and what are their high scores on the Boston Pack?
A: John Veneron: That’s a good question. I have no idea. I seriously have no idea. Nope, no clue whatsoever. PS – I love Boston.
A2: John Drake: -Sigh- it’s probably Johnlok, but it’s hard to play with him singing. I mean, he gets SUCH A BIG HEAD no one else can see the screen…
Q: Since I assume most people on staff also play the game, and probably together, I bet you have some stories to tell. What was your most memorable moment playing with/against another staff member?
A1: Chris C: Early on in the project I found myself on vocals with the lead singer for Honest Bob (Dan Schmidt) on drums. As his song “I Get By” had gone into the game the day before, we decided to give it a try. I don’t know if you know this but “I Get By” is one of the hardest songs to sing in the game, and this was one of the first times I had heard it.
Jump ahead two minutes, and I’m butchering his poor song. He is both completely heartbroken at the abuse his music is taking and thinks that I’m doing it on purpose. Of course, this causes me to laugh uncontrollably. Let me tell you, never tick off a man with sticks. Now he’s shouting at me to “cut it out,” I’m laughing so hard that my singing keeps getting worse, and our guitarist is visibly edging towards the door. Mercifully we fail out before any further damage is caused, but I’m forbidden from playing that song again.
A2: JoeKelly: I'm sure the coders/artists wouldn't be happy with this, but glitches stand out in my memory of the most entertaining and memorable things. When the singer glows like a being of pure energy, or a polygon from someone's hand flies into the crowd, it's always commented on. Sometimes seeing things broken is unusually humorous.
Q: Has there ever been a moment when you were online playing and were amazed at what the users have created as far as characters, band names, or that they beat a specific part of a song?
A1: Robert Butts: The banner covered with pictures of players and their in-game characters that Apples and the community sent to us was amazing. It was really great to see the various characters and logos that people had created. The time and effort that everyone had put into their creations was striking.
A2: Jeff Dishman: One time when we were testing online play for Rock Band Europe, one of the people we were playing with on the live servers had Conan O'Brien as their character. It was a spitting image of Conan (and he became the drummer of our band).
Q: Everyone nitpicks at their own creations. What’s the one thing that bugs you the most about the game that no one else will probably ever notice?
A: Dan T: Just one thing?
In the World Tour, there are a bunch of 10 song or so "Showcase" gigs that have very generic names. Up until a couple of days before launch, these were showcase gigs for record labels that contained artists signed to those labels (for example, instead of Jukebox Hits, it was the Such and Such Record Label Showcase containing all of the bands on that label). Just as we were wrapping things up, we found out that there had been a snafu with our legal and writing teams and we had to rename them to generic names at the last minute.
It's sad, because part of the real life experience of touring with a mid-size band is playing label showcases. Nobody will ever know unless they look up the artists and see that they're all on the same label, but I see it every time I play through the World Tour.
Q: “Alex and Eran formed Harmonix initially not to develop video games, but rather to create new ways for non-musicians to experience the unique joy that comes from making music.” – HMX Website
First, thanks for that. Second, to what extent do you think this has been realized with Rock Band? Is this the pinnacle of music gaming, or can/will you take it even further?
A: Alex Rigopulos: We definitely have not reached the pinnacle yet, not even close. As expansive as Rock Band is, there were dozens of ideas for the game that the crew at Harmonix were excited about that we simply didn't have time to pursue in the first installment. We're just getting warmed up.
Q: Having worked on and having played this game throughout the development process, are you guys still amazed at just how awesome this game really is?
A: Dan T: Definitely. It's really rare that you'll work on something for two years and ever want to see it again, but with Rock Band we all end up playing the game in social settings very regularly and enjoy ourselves (well, except for when "Say it Ain't So" comes on, but that's also because it's the first song in the game and we've heard it thousands of times).
Q: Are there plans for a second Grateful Dead Pack? Before the game was released it was said that there would be somewhere around 18 GD songs available for Rock Band, and one of the rumored songs that wasn’t in the released pack was “Alabama Getaway.” Are these clues to a second Dead Pack?
A: John Drake: We’re committed to delivering the rest of our promised GD tracks! We’re psyched that Rock Band has such a huge variety of music coming out in the next few months and the Grateful Dead is definitely a part of that plan!
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Credits (in order of appearance):
Heather Wilson: Audio Producer (DLC)
Jeremy Bridge: Composer/Sound Designer
Jeff Allen: Composer/Sound Designer
Izzy Maxwell: Composer/Sound Designer
Matt Clement: Quality Assurance Lead: DLC
Dan Teasdale: Senior Designer (Lead: Rock Band 2)
Chris Canfield: Playtest Coordinator
JoeKelly: Composer/Sound Designer
Jeff Somers: Software Developer
John Veneron: Community Development (HMXJohnlok)
John Drake: Harmonix Public Relations Coordinator
David Goodrich: Media Artist
Robert Butts: Quality Assurance
Jeff Dishman: Quality Assurance
Alex Rigopulos: CEO
